LGBT TEFL Teachers – where do you fit in?

LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. It is a hidden issue in TEFL with many teachers keeping quiet depending on the country they live in and coursebooks pretending there are no non-heterosexual people at all.

EFL is an acronym we use to talk about English as a Foreign Language. EFL students usually live in non English speaking countries and want to learn English mainly to use it on their travels or business trips abroad and to communicate with English speaking visitors to their country, etc.

TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Simply put, this is usually used to talk about teaching English to people who live in a non-English speaking country and who want to learn English for business or to take an exam, etc.

In our article on LGBT teachers (link below) we quote Scott Thornbury who suggests that TEFL attracts a higher percentage of gay teachers. In his article Window Dressing vs Cross Dressing in EFL Sub-Culture he actually talks about the relatively high proportion of gays & lesbians in TEFL.

We haven’t seen any research on this subject and wonder if it is actually true. So we have put in this poll to ask the question. Are you an LGBT TEFL teacher? (The poll is anonymous and you can vote without logging in; no personally identifiable information is collected.)

In the real world statistics vary but census data suggests that about 6% of the population is LGBT. We’d just like to see what the situation is like out there in the real world of TEFL teaching and whether Scott Thornbury is right in his assumption.

NB due to a change in site structure the original poll is no longer active; please feel free to vote on this new poll.

Grammar & Language

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